Yiying Fan | Shanghainese | world traveler | journalist | dog lover

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A Chinese biotech company aiming to cash in on people’s desires to duplicate their beloved pets has successfully cloned the nation’s first house cat, according to an announcement delivered at a press conference Monday afternoon.

The cloned cat — named Dasuan, or Garlic in English — is a British shorthair born naturally on July 21, 66 days after a successful embryo transfer. The company behind the procedure, Sinogene, began researching cat cloning last August. According to the Beijing-based biotech firm, the surrogate mother — who is not the same breed as the cloned offspring — is behaving “maternal enough,” and the kitten is in good health.

Garlic’s owner, Huang Yu, says he read about Sinogene in the news late last year. When his 2-year-old cat, the original Garlic, died from a urinary tract infection in January, he brought the animal’s body to a pet hospital in Wenzhou, a city in eastern China’s Zhejiang province. Veterinarians there were able to extract cells from the deceased animal to be sent to Sinogene in Beijing. After months of waiting, Huang finally got to meet the new Garlic on Monday, and became the country’s first owner of a cloned cat.

Though the number of cats in China’s pet industry and the rate of cat ownership remain less than those of dogs, the “cat economy” has been steadily growing. According to a Chinese pet industry white paper released Thursday, the size of the domestic pet market is expected to reach 202 billion yuan ($28.6 billion) this year, up from 171 billion yuan in 2018. The domestic cat market is projected to reach 78 billion yuan in 2019, up 19.6% year over year — a growth rate that’s outpacing the domestic dog market. While there are still 55 million pet dogs in China compared with 44 million pet cats, ownership of the latter is also growing at a faster rate.

Sinogene cloned its first dog — Longlong, or Dragon — for medical research in May 2017 before offering the service commercially the following year. The company says it hopes to be cloning 500 dogs per year in the near future. “We decided to get into the cat business after witnessing the rising popularity (of cats) among China’s younger generations,” Zhao Jianping, Sinogene’s deputy general manager, told Sixth Tone during an interview last month.

Sinogene charges 380,000 yuan to clone a dog and 250,000 yuan to clone a cat. The company currently cooperates with some 600 domestic veterinary clinics to promote its pet cloning business.

The world’s first cloned cat — dubbed CC for Copy Cat or Carbon Copy — was born at Texas A&M University in December 2001, several years before the world’s first cloned dog, Snuppy, was born in South Korea in 2005. The Texas A&M researchers went through 82 embryos before they were able to get a surrogate mother pregnant with a single kitten. Though CC was a clone, she reportedly grew up with a slightly different look and personality from her genetic mother.

Despite his excitement leading up to Monday’s press event, Huang confessed to Sixth Tone that he was a bit disappointed when he finally saw the new Garlic for the first time. “The basic pattern of his coat is the same, but the distinctive patch of black fur on his chin is gone,” he lamented.

Shanghai resident Feng Tanyu is the proud owner of a 7-year-old purebred ragdoll. “He has a multifaceted personality just like lots of other cats,” Feng, 32, told Sixth Tone. As a cat owner, Feng says he understands the premise behind cloning. “If an owner can’t get over the pain of losing their beloved cat, I think a clone might be a good idea to help them during the grieving process,” he said.

But another cat lover, Zhang Yuan, doesn’t see how a cloned cat could be an adequate substitute. “Dogs and cats are different: Dogs can live happily alongside most humans, while cats are picky and follow their feelings about whether to like people,” the Shanghai native told Sixth Tone. “Having the same appearance but a different personality and temperament will only lead to disappointment and more pain in the long run.”

Regardless of what the future holds for Huang and his new fur baby, he says he can’t wait to take Garlic home in October. “If the technology for cat cloning hadn’t been developed in time,” he said, “I probably would have lost Garlic for good — and then I’d have to live with regret for the rest of my life.”